24 June, 2012

THE NOBEL INDEX

3 June 2012

Can you guess how many Nobel Prize winners did the Muslim population, estimated at around 1.5 billion – or every fifth human on the planet – produce in a century? A hundred? One in ten thousand? Be more forgiving. One per lakh? Sorry. With just NINE Nobel laureates, Muslims account for one Laureate per 16,00,00,000 people. Yes that is SIXTEEN crore! Table 6 presents these nine heroes of the Muslim world.

[An extract from author's book Nai Subh, to be published. The chapter written last year is reproduced as a document]

ADDITIONAL"Ikram Ahmed, what holds true of the Nobel holds true for Olympic Championships, Oscars, listing on Nasdaq, employment in NASA or IBM or Microsoft. Comparable data for presence of world class R&D laboratories, observatories makes dismal reading. The publication of scientific papers absolutely shames. Another time I shall write a note on scientists and science publications. The reason? I have debated these in my book but you have beautifully summed it up: the way we treat our secular scholars, the scant respect we show our men of letters."